Finished Before They Began

This is an older story I wrote. I apologize if you’ve read it, though I doubt any of you have.

Finished Before They Began

It was a humid day. Sweat became glue, bonding his clothes to him. Jake wanted nothing more than to get home, strip his clothes off and jump in the shower. The red-orange sun hung low in the sky, beaming down on him like some merciless task master. He looked at his watch, noticing that the skin around it had already turned a distinctive shade of, what he referred to as, lobster red. Jake had never seen a lobster in his life. In fact he had only heard about them on the TV, and seen pictures of them in magazines. He wondered if he had seen one.

11:30 AM! Jake’s heart sunk, he had only been working for 2 1/2; hours, he still had 6 1/2; to go. He remembered once hearing about how exposure to sunlight, caused cancer. He wondered if he told Cal, the Foreman, that he was getting cancer, would he be allowed to leave. Jake remembered “Old Wheeze’s” wife, Madame Wheeze, (they were named that for the amazing amount of cigarettes they smoked each day). Old Wheeze got sick from lung cancer, (go figure), after working here for 27 years, and Foreman refused to pay for his medical expenses. Madame Wheeze came here, begging, pleading with Cal. He showed no sympathy, no sympathy at all, despite the fact that he made more in a week than they all did in a year. Finally, drowning in medical bills, Madame Wheeze offered to take Old Wheeze’s place at work. She began to realize that unemployment was a luxury she could not afford. That bastard, Cal, actually let her work (although we didn’t let her do anything). She stood out here, from 9 AM to 6PM, with the rest of us, in this hot burning sun. But Jake never once heard her complain. That’s why one day when she collapsed, everyone (but Cal) ran over to her. Imagine their surprise as she lay dying, muttering under her breath, “He’s gone!” No one knew what she was talking about, in fact they assumed heat stroke and dehydration had finally gotten to her. But, lo and fucking behold, she was right. The doctors say that Madame and Old died within two minutes of each other. Married for 45 years, now that was love.

Jake thought of him. He couldn’t wait until he got back. He wondered what he was doing, where he was, was he thinking about him. A distinct feeling of sadness overcame him. He knew that he would be the Madame to his Old when the time came.

“Hey, pretty boy! I don’t pay you to stand around and daydream!” FUCK YOU CAL, FUCK YOU.

I miss you!

It was a humid day. Sweat-rivers ran down his face from under his helmet. Steve wanted nothing more than to go home and strip off his uniform and take one of the barracks infamous cold showers. What the fuck was he doing here? Why was in E-raq? Fighting against people that he had never met before, and didn’t give a flying damn about. All around him the sounds of conflict, bombs exploding, people dying, screams filling the air. He was hot, he was nauseous, and most of all, he was tired, tired of death and dying, tired of loneliness, tired of being tired. Here he was working patrol in the outskirts of some Iraqi village, where “insurgents” had been spotted. What the fuck was an insurgent? He hated it.

Just last week a car bomb exploded in “Fau-lu-sha” (he couldn’t even mentally pronounce the damn place. Why was he here?). It killed a buddy of his, probably his best friend here. Gary was his name, he was 18 from Nashville, Tennessee, or so his dog-tag read. The bomb ripped most of his head off. When the medical unit got there, they found Steve sticky with Gary’s blood, crying hysterically. They put him in counseling, told him to see a chaplain, and two days later put him back on patrol. His Sergeant, Russ, told him to get over it and stop “moping like a bitch.” But how could he get over it? Gary reminded him so much of… him.

But that was the norm here, people lost best friends and buddies, people you knew all your life or just met two weeks ago, all the time. That was how war went. Steve’s justification was that it beat farming in Montana though. Didn’t it? The dull monotony of hoe-plow-hoe-sow; it was enough to make a man go mad. He remembered the look of horror when he told his parents that he was enlisting. They begged him not to go, but he knew that if he stayed in Montana for one more minute, he would explode. His mom cried for him not to go, to think about her and Lucy, his younger sister. Her pleas fell on deaf ears. He snickered sardonically; if they actually knew what his only motivation for not going was they would have personally deposited him in Iraq, faster than a car bomb can decapitate. BOOM.

He was in Montana. Steve remembered his exact words when he told him he’d enlisted, “Well, at least you will finally get to see what a lobster looks like.” That was it, no yelling, no screaming, no crying, just the strong support that he needed. That is why he loved him. It was pathetic Steve was so afraid of the consequences of his love that he couldn’t even think of his name. Don’t Ask- Don’t Tell. That applied as much for the Army as it did for the farm he worked at in Montana, as matter of fact for the entire no name, ass-backwards town he lived in. But when he left Iraq (in exactly six days, not that he was counting), he was going to say FUCK YOU Russ Madison and the entire United States Army and FUCK YOU Cal Green and your fucking slave labor camp posing as a farm and FUCK YOU mom and dad and your close-minded judgmental ways.

When Steve got out of here he was going to go back home and sweep Jake (THERE HE SAID IT) off his feet, in front of everyone and plant the biggest, wettest kiss on his lips that anyone had ever seen. So fuck all of you. Then they would move, Tennessee perhaps, he heard Nashville was nice. They would be free to be who they were and to do what they wanted.

I miss you too!

It was a humid day when Senator William Mitchell of Montana got the report of another soldier killed in Iraq. His already foul mood, deepen. Sweat stained the arm pits of his silk shirt, forcing him to begin dreading the visit to the cleaners. He quickly scanned the file, private blah blah blah, who came from blah blah blah town in Montana, like they all did. Who cares? “No one is going to miss him,” Senator Mitchell thought. He supported the war and was sick of these liberal pansies whining about causalities. Fuck them he thought! People die in war; that is just how it goes! If you didn’t want to be in Iraq, why did you sign up in the first place? Stay in East Nowhere Montana and shut up!

Just then his phone rang. It was his buddy Cal Green, they both went to same private high school and had been great friends ever since. Cal, as usual, was bitching and moaning; this time about some farmhand who just up and died on him, blah blah blah. Cal needed help, making sure the Department of Labor didn’t investigate this latest death too closely, just like with that old hag he had working there at some point. Senator Mitchell agreed after all, what was another death, FUCK THEM TOO!

“Who cares Cal? No one is going to miss him!”

“I know Bill!”

“Alright I have to go. I will talk to you later.”

“But Wait, Senator…”

“I hate when you call me that, Foreman. What do you want?”

“About the war…”

“About the farm…”

Silence on the other end. He hung up. Certain conversations, like so many other things, sometimes finished before they began.